ABSTRACT
Some anthropologists even suggest that the mind-altering substances may have played an evolutionary role in the mental development of humans. The end of the nineteenth century and the whole of the twentieth century were hallmarked by the dynamic development of sciences and, by a long list of military conflicts on a local and global scale. In the Western world, introduction of anesthetics and analgesics to wider medicinal practice started early in the nineteenth century, in a small and overdue manner through dental surgery. Designer drugs involve the innovative structural modification of long-known psychoactive compounds, and in some of them these modifications are carried out on templates derived from plant material. According to the generally accepted view, designer drugs are structural or functional analogs of controlled drugs that have been devised to mimic the pharmacological effects of known and classified drugs. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
